7 Best Photo Filter Apps for iPhone

Check out the app store and you’ll see a seemingly endless array of photo editing apps at your disposal; but which are worth your time? We’ll help you wade through the seas of same-‘ol-same-‘ol and find you a few of the best photo apps for iPhone currently on the market. Whether you’re looking to add words and designs, find some unique filters, or really want to get down to the editing nitty gritty, here’s a list of the best photo editing apps we love to use.

Piclab HD

Piclab HD makes it easy to create beautiful graphic designs with your photos. Along with the standard photo editing tools, PicLab HD also lets you add text with a large number of fun fonts and shapes. You can also futz around with other design additions like stickers, decorative elements, film grains, light leaks and more. The tools are easy to use and yield surprisingly legit results –no need to buy postcards or event invites any more, just make your own!

iTunes ($1.99)

Tangent

If you’re looking to turn those travel photos into creative, modern artwork, check out Tangent. It comes with dozens of preset shapes and patterns allowing you to create shapes, patterns, and swirls within your photos. It also lets you blend, adjust opacity, and just generally mess around with your pictures until they’re way more than just snapshots. The tools allow for much more than just your basic editing, but it’s still very easy to use.

iTunes ($1.99)

Waterlogue

Turn any photo into a beautiful watercolor version of itself in one minute flat –all those years of struggling through art class wasted! There are twelve different watercolor filters to choose from, depending on which style of painting you prefer. Created by John Balestrieri (creator of Percolator and Popsicolor, two other great photo apps), Waterlogue is by far the best artwork app out there. My favorite feature is the little painting animation it does whenever you watercolorize a photo. Makes me feel a teeny tiny bit like I painted it myself…

iTunes ($2.99)

VSCO Cam

We’ve mentioned VSCO Cam in previous photo editing articles, but it’s worth mentioning again all the same. A great free app that combines picture-taking, editing, and even online sharing, VSCO Cam is chock full of useful features. With 15 editing features, you can adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation, and color temperature, along with adding grain and highlights and changing the tint of shadows. The app’s camera is great too, allowing for more capabilities and ease of use than your phone’s default camera app. You can also share photos via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and their own photo sharing platform, the Grid.

iTunes (free)

Tangled FX

Looking for something outside the box? Tired of the same old filters and contrast tools? Check out Tangled FX. The app turns your photos into works of art filled with detailed swirls, strokes, and patterns, easily making it one of the best photo filter apps out there. Choose from sixteen different settings, and dial the effect up or down. Oh, this one’s got a cool little animation vid too, so you can see your photos transform.

iTunes ($1.99)

Mextures

Mextures is a great app if you want to really play around with light, texture, and film grain. Unlike some apps that let you simply slap on a generic filter over your photos, Mextures encourages you to play around with tweaking the effects, blending and layering, to create unique images. It even lets you use textures from actual 35mm film scans. Need some ideas and a boost of creativity? Check out the “inspiration” aspect of the app to see what other users have done.

 

iTunes ($1.99)

Repix

Repix is way more than just a filter app, it’s more like a tiny artist studio on your phone. Use one of the dozen or so brushes along the bottom of the screen to add effects and edit your pictures with great detail, rather than broad strokes. With tools like flare, drips, dotter, charcoal, and bleach, you can edit single elements of the photo, or the whole thing. There are more brushes available through in-app purchasing, but the ones that come with the app offer a huge range of editing abilities.

iTunes ($1.99)

Which apps are your tools of choice when it comes to great photo editing? Tell us why you love ’em in the comments below!